Chapter 154: Visions

Selene’s POV

Ruins everywhere.

People scattered, languishing, crying out in pain. Properties reduced to rubble. Bodies on the ground. Little pups wailing with no one to hold them.

There was a level of chaos there that no single pair of eyes could fully take in.

The destruction was heavy, and I was standing right in the middle of it ... watching it all unfold and unable to do a single thing about it.

A small pup walked up to me. She looked like she was taking her last breath.

"I thought you were our saviour," she said.

"I’ll save you ... what happened?" I asked her, dropping to her level.

She couldn’t have been more than eight years old.

"They came to seek retribution. And now they’ve gotten it," she said.

I didn’t understand. "What do you mean, retribution? Who? How?"

Before she could answer, they all began to fade.

Like dust.

Like they were never there at all.

I needed answers and there were none coming. I screamed into the air, "What’s going on?"

Everything before my eyes vanished. Like vapour. Like it had been snatched away.

Until there was nothing. Total emptiness. A void.

Everywhere looked like a desert.

"Where did everyone go?" I called out.

My voice echoed back at me in a way that felt wrong ... hollow and strange in a way that made my skin crawl.

I started calling out every name I knew. "Astrid! Mom! Dad! Lucian ... where are you?"

Nothing. Not even a whisper.

Then a loud, terrifying voice tore through the silence from nowhere.

"Morvaine!"

I jerked awake and screamed.

That was when I realised it had been a dream.

William was beside me. He pulled me into him immediately, holding me tight as my body trembled. I was shaking and I couldn’t stop. He held me through all of it.

"What happened?" he asked.

I couldn’t explain. It hadn’t felt like a dream ... it had felt like an encounter. I remembered every single detail of it with unsettling clarity, but I couldn’t make sense of any of it. My mouth felt too heavy to form words.

"Morvaine..." was the only thing that came out.

"Morvaine? What happened to Morvaine?" William asked again.

I still couldn’t answer.

He had to call a doctor. But even before the doctor arrived, I had started to pull myself back together and recover from the shock. The words still wouldn’t come though. What I had seen refused to be spoken.

I told myself I would find the courage to tell William later.

Right now, I needed access to Ms. Ashlyn. She knew a great deal of history and she was well-versed in these kinds of mysterious things.

I thought about how I had called Astrid, my parents, Lucian ... all of them ... inside that encounter.

Could it have been a premonition?

I wasn’t built for strange things like this. I had a business to run. And on top of that, I had believed I was the solution to Morvaine’s past, present, and future challenges. I had built something magnificent that was benefiting the entire pack and bringing everyone together ... and yet here I was, being visited by something dark and terrifying.

It was crazy. I felt crazy.

The doctor arrived with Beta Damien ... both of them among the few trusted enough to receive classified information inside these walls.

"What happened to her?" the doctor asked.

"She woke up jerking, drenched in sweat, looking like she’d just crawled out of a nightmare," William said.

The doctor checked my eyes, my cardiovascular response, and my pulse.

"She went through real shock," he said. "It’s a good thing you were here to hold her while it was happening. When she’s ready, she can tell us what she experienced ... but whatever it was, it would have been deeply terrifying."

He spoke like a psychiatrist ... with precision and a kind of quiet expertise that I found myself respecting. I was genuinely impressed. But even with all his articulate and intricate explanations, I already knew he wouldn’t be able to give me the answers I was actually searching for.

"What did you see, Selene? You can talk to me. Please," William said softly.

"It was terrifying," I started, speaking slowly. "I saw people in pain. Agony. Something that looked like complete ruin ... total destruction."

They looked at me the way people look at someone they’re not sure about.

"Are you certain about what you saw?" the doctor asked carefully. "We’re not saying you’re imagining things ... just try to be a little more specific, a little more grounded about your experience."

I knew they wouldn’t believe me. I shouldn’t have bothered saying anything at all.

"That’s as real as it gets," I replied flatly.

He continued his checks without another word about it.

Ugh. I had somewhere to be. I had a business meeting and I was already behind.

"I’m leaving for my business meeting, William," I said, stepping out of the bed and moving to get ready.

"You can’t just leave like that, Selene," William said.

"I can’t stay here and watch the business suffer," I replied.

The doctor wrapped up and said he’d return for another check later. He left.

"Please be careful," William said.

Then he stepped out too.

I had the car ready. The newly opened office was waiting for me.

I would seek answers later. Right now, I had work to do.

I arrived at the office and walked in acting completely normal. Like I was fine. Like nothing had happened.

The greetings hit me like a wave.

"Good morning, Madam. Good morning, Madam." It echoed and re-echoed around me and I couldn’t get enough of it. Something about it settled me.

We held the meeting ... going over how to move forward with sales and production. New roles were also assigned that day, given to smart, proven people who were ready to push the company forward.

By the time it was over, it didn’t feel like work even though it had been work. I was passionate about what I’d built, so I never tracked the hours.

I was almost at the door when it happened again.

Open visions.

Right there, standing still, just as the sun began to set ... I saw it. Almost identical to what I had seen in the dream. Agony. Pain. Destruction.

If the goddess was showing me this, what exactly did she want me to do about it?

"What’s the solution, Goddess?" I heard myself ask inside the vision.

No answer came. But I kept waiting for one.

It ceased just before my driver came in to check on me.

I was destabilised. But I acted fine, as I always did.

I switched my phone on and dialled Ms. Ashlyn’s number.

"Hello, Ms. Ashlyn."

"Luna! To what do I owe this call?" She sounded genuinely happy to hear from me, but I didn’t have the space to match her energy right now.

"I need to see you. We need to talk ... now," I said to her.

She would know from my tone alone that it was urgent.